Annoyed? Shut Up and Follow.
Beyond the colossal World Gate, the Shareltea campus buzzed with far more activity than usual. It wasn’t nearly as packed as it had been during the placement exams, when tens of thousands had crammed together. Most participants were here voluntarily. In other words, only a tiny fraction of the total student body had shown up. Like most university events, it was the kind of thing where only those who wanted to participate actually did.
Still, given Palaestra Academy’s scale, even a fraction of the students added up to an impressive crowd. Ten percent of a single grade level meant thousands, and the scene before us proved it—thousands of people had gathered on the grounds.
“LGBTQIAPK+ club members, please gather here~ LGBTQIA2S+ club members, this isn’t your spot, so please head over there~”
“Daily Palaestra reporters, this way please!”
“Members of the Activist Giraffe club, we’re assembling here before dispersing! Hurry up, everyone!”
“My Adult Pony! My Adult Ponyyyy! Ponyyyyyyy!!! Hunterrrrrr!!!”
“Crazy horse-fucking bastards, get lost!”
Rainbow-colored flags, crude banners painted with cameras, flags featuring giraffes, suspicious-looking beast-kin, environmentalist banners showing a peaceful Earth beside a burning Shareltea, and… just a regular pony flag. Students from countless groups streamed toward their respective banners, each representing their own little faction.
“This is some next-level bullshit,” I muttered.
“Do you think they also formed one-person parties like us?” Shannon asked.
“Probably if they’re skilled enough. Otherwise… I’m not sure. I don’t know the details.”
Naturally, the three of us—me included—weren’t affiliated with any club. So we simply stood off to the side, waiting in a quiet corner.
As the flow of people entering the Shareltea campus began to thin, a short woman with bear ears perched on her head approached us. She carried an oversized bag and wore a full-body magic-powered exoskeleton from fingertips to toes. It looked like standard gear for a porter, designed to handle heavy loads.
The bear-kin woman scanned the three of us, then fixed her gaze on my face. Her expression was unnervingly bright.
“Um, are you perhaps… a first-year…”
“…Agniya Lipovsky, the porter?” I finished.
She nodded, her vivid red hair and golden eyes catching the light. Then she pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket and pointed straight at me.
“You’re the client, Kang?”
“Yes, that’s correct. I’d appreciate it if you called me by my first name instead of my surname.”
“Then… Sian?”
“Yes.”
Her complete lack of politeness from the first meeting rubbed me the wrong way, but since she was my senior I decided to let it slide. Besides, this academy had never been big on mutual respect anyway.
I gestured to my companions in turn. “This elf is Mari. The dragon-kin over there is Shannon Redmond. The three of us make up the entire party.”
“Sian, Mari, Shannon. Three people total. You all have pretty names.”
“Just to be sure, you remember the terms of our contract, right?”
“Of course. I’ve done this porter gig more times than I can count. You don’t need to worry so much.”
She gave my arm a couple of light pats, flashing a coy, almost seductive smile. In that single gesture, any goodwill I’d been willing to extend plummeted straight down the drain.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t worry too much, junior.”
The sudden familiarity on a first meeting carried an unmistakable undercurrent—an attempt to establish dominance. And I was fairly certain that was exactly what it was.
“This senior knows a lot, after all.”
Pat, pat. There it was again.
The classic porter mentality. Or rather, the survival rule that spread like wildfire across the internet came to mind.
Within any group, secure your position of superiority and avoid stepping forward whenever possible.
Originally, porters were assigned the role of the weakest link in any party. This was because their position was fundamentally different from the other members. Cooking, cleaning, and maintaining equipment could be handled by anyone else. But carrying massive amounts of baggage was an entirely separate domain.
It would be ideal if everyone simply dealt with their own gear through “no-effort” management, but that only worked in the moment. More luggage meant increased weight, which directly translated to decreased combat capability. Think something like Overencumbered: Agility -50%. And in a fight, slowing down dramatically raised the odds of getting killed.
You couldn’t launch quick attacks. You couldn’t dodge nimbly. You couldn’t even pull off the hunter’s ultimate weapon—the tactical retreat. Trying to compensate for reduced speed would only burn through your stamina faster. That was why, for anything longer than a short hunt, a dedicated porter to carry the heavy load was essential.
Of course, most porters were so weak they couldn’t guarantee their own survival even against a random passing deer. So their default role was to stand at a safe distance and watch the battle unfold. Non-combat, yet undeniably necessary.
The problem lay in that very position—watching fights while burdened with everyone’s luggage.
“…For now, we were thinking of handing our baggage over to you. Will this much slow you down significantly while walking?”
“This much? It’s well within my capacity. I don’t think it’ll slow me down at all.”
“Then, if a problem arises, you should still be able to dodge and hold out on your own, right?”
“Pretty much?”
It was the perfect position for a runner. Her sufficiently developed evasion skills would be more than enough to let her escape when things got dangerous. Absolute perfection. A masterpiece of positioning that even the legendary Runjo—the greatest escape artist in the history of the Korean Peninsula—would admire. Most porters preferred exactly this kind of setup. Those who didn’t usually ended up with their heads planted in the ground somewhere, so it made sense.
Human history was riddled with trickery and flight. And among all professions, porters had perfected the art of running away.
“…You do know where we’re heading, right?”
“You said it was pretty far, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Red-grade at minimum. Possibly black. That’s why I’d like you to follow our instructions as much as possible.”
“That’s basic, isn’t it?”
“Even in dangerous situations, I’d appreciate your compliance.”
“Huh…?”
This was exactly why hunters always tried to keep porters on a tight leash. If porters had ever obediently followed such requests, I wouldn’t have needed to spell it out like this. Porters frequently engaged in political maneuvering within the party to escape such constraints. Her light attitude from the moment we met was likely part of that pattern.
“Is there some kind of problem?”
“No, it’s not that…”
“If there’s no problem, I’ll take that as agreement to follow our lead—especially mine.”
“…R-right. Understood.”
“We’ll make sure to protect you so you don’t get hurt even in dangerous situations, so you don’t need to worry too much.”
If you’re annoyed, shut up and follow.
Even if she had a naturally compliant personality, the fact that she was being paid meant there would be no exceptions.
“Ugh…”
I could only imagine how relieved she must have felt when the organizers announced that porters were allowed to participate as long as they couldn’t claim prizes. How happily she must have accepted the job when they said it would increase her workload and even offered an advance payment.
I had no intention of falling for that kind of scheming. It might seem overly sensitive or even psychopathic, but statistics proved this was a necessary precaution. Once you’d been burned by a porter as an employer, you couldn’t help but think this way.
Back in high school, when Mari’s condition had worsened after the Eagles’ consecutive losses, I’d gone on a Far North hunt with Sua instead. A blizzard had hit us, and our porter had bolted, leaving us short on supplies. Fortunately, Sua had experienced this before. Rather than heading to the nearest village, she’d taken us to a secluded cave.
While I sat there shivering in the freezing cave without even a campfire, Sua had slipped into our only sleeping bag and said:
For some reason all the buttons on her top had been undone, but anyway. Thanks to the warmth of someone who was practically an older sister to me, I managed to escape the cold. Of course, it hadn’t exactly been comfortable. If it had been, my hostility toward porters might not run quite so deep.
Sua must have felt awkward too, because she kept touching my body or suddenly drooling. As a result I barely slept, and the memory left a rather unpleasant aftertaste. It really hadn’t been easy.
Having gone through something like that, letting my guard down was out of the question.
“Oh, right. Shannon, you remember what I told you yesterday, don’t you? Let’s go with that plan.”
“Yes!”
The instructions I’d given Shannon as preparation for a porter’s potential flight. The porter herself probably couldn’t even guess what they involved. And it was better that way. Because the content was about how to catch her as quickly as possible if she ran. I’d even added an extra condition for Shannon to make it happen—promising to massage her tail all the way to our destination.
If she still tried to run after I’d gone that far, mere disappointment wouldn’t begin to cover it.
Even after that, I didn’t let go of my distrust toward the porter woman. Though to be fair, she herself had gone completely rigid, as if scared out of her wits.
“Then, I truly look forward to every student’s safe return and excellent hunt! Everyone, fighting!”
The short opening ceremony came to an end. The competition had finally begun.
“Shall we get moving?”
“Ugh, we’re finally going.”
“Hehe~ Porter lady, please follow us quickly~”
“Yes…”
Kang Sian and the other three headed toward the destination they had in mind.